drive

                       *

Late morning & I’m driving
          the flowers.

Erica gives off a dry autumn

          smell of sun

                       *

while cars pelt past.

          Drive, the flowers demand.

Earthsweat as they inch out of 

          their plastic & sun rivers the mirrors

                       *

touches every part

          of our bodies – legs and stems.

I hold hard around the harbour 

          while a blue-bearded iris reclines on the back seat 

                       *

the exact shade of the deep

          creviced hills or a Madonna’s

cloak in an old painting

          the sun propped behind her like a wheel.

Sarah Scott lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara where she completed an MA in Creative Writing at the IIML and works as Reviews Editor for a fine line. Her poems have been published in Ōrongohau|Best New Zealand Poems, Turbine|Kapohau, NZ Poetry Shelf, Landfall Tauraka and other publications. Her manuscript Sun Goddess, based on the paintings of Rita Angus, was awarded runner-up in the Kathleen Grattan Prize for a Sequence of Poems.